Quentin Pankhurst is a Professor of Physics and Director of the Healthcare Biomagnetics Laboratory at University College London – one of the top universities in the UK, and consistently rated one of the top 20 highest education institutions in the world. Previously, in 2008, he was the Director of the Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory at the Royal Institution of Great Britain (in Mayfair, London), where he held a position once held by such luminaries as Michael Faraday and Ernest Rutherford. On his return to UCL in 2011, he set up the UCL Institute of Biomedical Engineering, a cross-faculty institute that brought together 250 PIs and their teams – more than a thousand researchers in total – in common programmes based on translational research and experimental medicine.

Quentin’s work in bio- and nanomagnetism is directed towards making practical advances in the use of magnetic nanoparticles in healthcare. In his career to date he has published more than 250 papers that have been cited more than 13,500 times, and he has generated more than £45M in research grant income and investment. He is a co-inventor on 12 patent families with 80+ national filings covering applications in magnetic sensing, heating and actuation; and he is the co-founder of three spinout companies: Endomagnetics Ltd (Apr. 2007); Resonant Circuits Limited (Sept. 2009); and MediSieve Ltd (Apr. 2014). Together, these companies employ more than 25 full-time staff; and one of them, Endomagnetics Ltd, recorded an annual turnover in 2017/18 of more than £6.0M. Quentin was born and raised in New Zealand, and has lived in England since 1983. He is married and has two daughters.

e-mail: q.pankhurst@ucl.ac.uk